Shaking my head, I concentrated on the email I was composing. I wanted to run three focus groups for the upcoming Goddess campaign for one of our fragrance lines. We’d already had one, but I hadn’t overseen it. It turned out to be the wrong thing to delegate. The moderator hadn’t explored all facets, hadn’t asked all the right questions. I could do better, and I wanted to. It wasn’t easy to run focus groups for fragrances. They were luxuries—an aspiration, but since they didn’t serve a specific purpose the way antiaging creams did, it was hard to build a unique selling proposition. It was why the majority of the industry was banking on sexy and sensual ads to sell them. But fragrances meant something more to me than making me feel sexy. They were memories in a bottle, and dreams too, and somehow I could only convey that to focus groups if I was there in person.

After firing off the instructions to my marketing director, I discovered an email from Hailey. My sister respected my no-messaging policy... but only because she’d found the email loophole.

I smirked. Hailey was much like Carter in this regard.

Subject: URGENT

Discovered that the brother of a coworker is a CATCH. Maybe even has potential to be “the one.” Want me to introduce you to him?

I sighed, shaking my head. This was urgent? I could punish Hailey with silence, but knowing my sister, she’d get overexcited and set things in motion without waiting for my reply.

Val: Nope. Hold your horses.

The one. She was spitting one of my favorite phrases back at me. Sometimes I felt foolish for using the expression. Over the years, I’d dated a lot and had had a few relationships. Some had been longer, some just for fun—especially right after Jace and Hailey moved away from home. But I had a tendency to romanticize relationships. I couldn’t deny it. It was one of my faults.

I shook my head as I reread her email. I was determined to stick to my newfound resolution of taking it easy.

I turned off the computer screen, jotting notes on paper instead.

Carefree, childhood-favorite memories.

Same for vacation. Ask for exact details (especially of places) and infer associated fragrance notes.

Asking for direct smells rarely worked because people couldn’t identify individual notes. To anyone looking from outside, my notes wouldn’t make much sense, but this process worked for me. I started with keywords and half phrases and eventually developed questions.

I had almost forgotten about Carter, but at four o’clock on the dot, my phone buzzed. I startled in my seat. Each and every thought about the focus group flew away.

Carter: Tell me something about you.